Ad Serving Issues with Page Caching (site too fast?)

  • maxx99

    (@maxx99)


    10 years, 11 months ago

    First up, I absolutely love the plugin and have been able to reduce load time significantly. I currently use a VPS with 2GP or RAM as well as Maxcdn.

    Here’s my issue (full pingdom report at the end):

    At this point, I’m mainly concerned about server response time which has been awful (1.5-2 secs). With page caching set to disk enhannced and database caching set to APC I’ve gotten server response down to about 0.8 secs (see pingdom report below).

    The problem, however, is that as soon as I use those page caching settings my adserving gets screwed up. I use two ad networks and impressions served (default and sold) drop to about half of their normal values.

    I’ve tried this out several times now. Using W3’s best page caching settings for my site increases load times and site speed which results in higher pages per visitor driving better engagement. That’s all great, but ad impressions served drop alongside each time I see these site performance gains.

    Any help on this would be really appreciated, I’ve been battling with this for weeks, even tried out supercache with no success.

    Thanks,
    Max

    Pingdom tools link

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Pothi Kalimuthu

    (@pothi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    My guess is that your site shouldn’t use any full page caching at all. The more you cache a page, the more you’d lose in ads. If your server can’t be stable without any full page cache, then you may want to consider increasing the server resources. There is always room for improvement in other areas.

    BTW, the link to Pingdom test results shows 404.

    Thread Starter maxx99

    (@maxx99)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for the feedback. I updated the pingdom link above in my original post.

    This is the first time I’m hearing that I lose ad impressions when caching a page. Isn’t that the whole point of using W3?

    Thread Starter maxx99

    (@maxx99)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Hoping someone else can chime in, b/c I don’t understand why caching would do this. All major online publisher (I even work for one) use page caching I assume, I doubt they would let this affect their ad impressions served.

    Based on my Pingdom tools link, can the issue be that my site now loads very fast and the ad tags are loading towards the end so many users are already on the next page before the ads have had time to load?

    Thanks again!

    Pothi Kalimuthu

    (@pothi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Based on my Pingdom tools link, can the issue be that my site now loads very fast and the ad tags are loading towards the end so many users are already on the next page before the ads have had time to load?

    Unlikely.

    Hoping someone else can chime in

    Again, unlikely.

    When someone has already replied, others hardly look in such threads.

    Thread Starter maxx99

    (@maxx99)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for your feedback again, but would really love to get any insight into my questions though. Why would caching affect adserving?

    Pothi Kalimuthu

    (@pothi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Did you ask this question to those two ad networks?

    Some more questions to ponder about…

    How do they count unique visitors?

    Do they use JavaScript or WordPress hooks?

    Do they use unique ID or hash to identify a unique visitor?

    How does that unique ID or hash generated?

    Does that unique ID or hash change based on IP of the visitor?

    Does that unique ID or hash change, even when full page caching turned on?

    Thread Starter maxx99

    (@maxx99)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for helping out!

    I did ask one of the ad networks, and their answer (just liked I’d expect) was that their ads aren’t served locally via my site obviously so my plugin can’t cache them. I tend to believe that, b/c these are major ad networks and I doubt I’m the only one using W3C with an ad network.

    Might have not been clear on this earlier, but everything was totally normal when APC page caching was selected, just disk enhanced somehow reduces ad impressions considerably. So I assume this has nothing to do with how they count visitors.

    Another guess: maybe disk enhanced page caching changes they way the different pieces on my site are pulled in and “de-prioritizes” the javascript ad tags so the site loads quickly but not all of the ad tags are fully loaded before a user is onto the next page?

    Thanks again!

    Pothi Kalimuthu

    (@pothi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Full page caching, using APC or disk-enhanced, doesn’t alter any part of the page. For that, there are other options, such as minify. Also, W3TC or any other caching plugin has no control over javascripts that are loaded from external domain/s.

    If a page loads faster, due to caching, it is only going to increase the time spent by the visitors on that page. But, if a page loads slower, that only frustrates the visitors who are likely to spend less time.

    Thread Starter maxx99

    (@maxx99)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Agree with all your points and that’s exactly what I was expecting, but in your first response you said caching does decrease ad impressions.

    The more you cache a page, the more you’d lose in ads.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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